Thinking back at Lyst now, I can’t say anything else than it was really amazing. I can’t think of one thing that was not great! On so many levels: Speakers, food, people, games… It was the first time for someone from Copenhagen Game Collective and Game Girl Workshop to come together and organize something like this, and we were quite nervous. Especially taking the topics into account: Romance, love and sex in games. It felt like so many things could go wrong, on so many levels.

Patrick Jarnfelt from CphGC and I, Andrea Hasselager from Game Girl Workshop first started collaborating on the iPad game Moontide (still in production), an abstract game that emotionally follows the female cycle. We quickly found out that we were a dynamic duo, and when Patrick told me about the idea that had been circulating around Copenhagen Game Collective for a while: A game jam about relationships emotions, and sex, I was like ’Let’s do it!’ CGC had been a bit hesitant about doing it, because of it being sensitive topics and stepping into the (important) and ongoing discussions in the games industry, right now. I guess our conclusion was: Yea, we will probably make mistakes, but if you don’t start somewhere, you will never start. Read more »

This years Play Festival: w00t is going to be blazingly fun. We are in the middle of organizing it and finding cool game designers and speakers to join us. Right now we need your games. If you have a game that could be played at w00t, please submit it to our open call here (deadline April 1st, so hurry).

Almost 2 months ago, one of my games was selected for the Wild Rumpus party in London. I was lucky enough to be able to attend, and it was everything I had hoped for. I consider myself a rookie in the Copenhagen game scene, not to mention globally, and I only found out about Wild Rumpus a year ago. For those of you who have no idea:

The Wild Rumpus brings together the best of indie mutliplayer videogames for the most unique events of crazy, exuberant, social and sometimes physical gameplay. Our games line ups turn conventional videogame culture on its head. Closer in spirit to party, playground, or even drinking games, these are all games that you can’t play at home on your own. So come along and LET THE WILD RUMPUS START! – thewildrumpus.co.uk

When we made LAZA KNITEZ!!, we designed our video game to mimick some of the affordances of a foosball table, where the social situation and space are a key part of what makes the game compelling for a broad audience. Then when we built the Buttfighter, we asked ourselves: “Can we get players of our game to stand around our video game in a public space, and can we get other people to pay attention to it?” This being our first video game, we started Googling so hard we almost poked a hole in the back of the internet. What we found was an emerging scene of independent developers feeling the same vibes. The Wild Rumpus seemed to be years ahead of anything else in terms of bringing these types of games to actual people, which is what they were intended for. They lift the burden of finding a space for people like you and me to go, where we can, at least for one night, pick up a controller and play a game of Samurai Gunn instead of a round of darts or foosball.

Not only do they provide you with the space, they do a marvelous job of curating and selecting games based on their accessibility, innovation, spectatorship, and the likelihood you’ll end up craving more.

The weekend has passed and so has the festival. We have had great response and a lot of fun running this festival. There were so many cool game talks people, boardgame people and cool game designers running their street games.

Festival area right before opening

I even had a friend not usually associating with games being there with his two little daughters having a lot of fun spying on people for speed guerilla gardening and creating hummingbirdmen. Great to see this kind of involvement too.

At our third day here we wanted to get to know the local culture more. We wanted to hear some local fairytales and folk stories. That’s why we arranged a get-together with some of the locals at a café on a Malé suburb – Villingili (it’s on another island, and you have to take a ferry to get there, but yes, it’s a “suburb”).

Telling stories to a crowd can be a bit daunting if you’re not used to it. I remembered a classic danish parlour game that my friend Anders Børup taught me. It is a collaborative storytelling game where people take turns at saying a word that is attached to the current sentence and then it goes around in a circle. Anyone can always end the sentence by saying “full stop” instead of a word, which then changes the direction and begins a new sentence. It is best played fast and to a specific rhythm. This forces people to not over-think and makes it more silly and fun.

Here is a sentence we built that I really love. It’s a bit non-sensical and aaaalmost poetic:

“Malé is unpleasantly humid, yes, this will destroy mother earth if we want all the passionfruit all in one mouthful.”

The last couple of days we have been settling in. Getting to know the “island time” and meeting local people and Amani’s family. All very nice people.

I got to play a game with the locals that they claim is the predecessor of the other games in the same variant. The game is called Ohlvalhu Gondi and is a type of Kalaha/Mancala and is played sea shells called cowrie. The cowrie used to be their currency, so playing this game would have an element of gambling involved. The cowrie is also depicted on their really beautiful paper money as a legacy of their history.

Yay! We got invited to participate in this cool game design trip to the Maldives.

Amani Naseem of the Collective has invited a group of international game designers to go and design games and make playful events in the capital city of the Maldives, Malé. We will work with key artists, thinkers and organizers in the Maldives and create a playful event in the public spaces of Malé.

Image courtesy of Ida Marie Toft

There are more reasons why we go to the Maldives of all places in the world. Firstly; Amani is from there. She has family there.and knows a lot of the local community. Secondly, Amani was invited to join the Maldivian pavilion for this year’s Venice Biennale and decided to invite designers to do collaborative game design events in the Maldives and in Venice.

Last weekend we were at the PlayPublik festival in Berlin, hosted by the amazing Invisible Playground. It was a blast, and we got to showcase a new version of Idiots attack the Top Noodle! We also tried to showcase one of our new creations: The Puddle Peddler. I say “tried” because we just could not get it running. Like with any other technology; when you add layers of complexity, the risk of failure increases. But though we didn’t get to showcase it at this Festival, we are making it ‘sturdier’ for the next. Still, read the concept description; it’s quite an interesting game.
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While everybody was at the Game Developers Conference in SF, having fun and receiving awards, we were also having fun with a talk about prototypes and experimental games. We were invited by Shareplay to give a talk about our work. The talk was titled “from protoype to production”. Shareplay is a transmedia venture interested in the development of the future media sector. That means they have some capital for thing like this. Which is pretty good for Northern Jutland and the gaming scene there.

The actual location for the talk was in a bar called Viva La Revolution. It was kind of a small and cozy setting, which led the mind towards a small smoke filled underground NYC comedy club. Perfect setting for showing experimental and ridiculous games. And of course, there was beer, which also helps to set the mood. In that sense, it really differentiates itself from the Copenhagen version of the Spilbar, which is more geared toward formal talks and professional networking. The Spillbar 9000 takes another approach and creates a more casual environment that should help the networking. It was even more evident, since, as mentioned, it was during GDC. So they audience was mostly students and less people in the game industry.

At yesterday’s Melbourne IGDA night we started an impromptu round of the Danish Clapping Game. It caught on and suddenly we played in threes and fours. Now, (the day after) my legs are red and sore from the hard clapping I did to win each and every game (it may or may not be true that I have done so).